RETROSPECT
OF
WESTERN TRAVEL.
BY
HARRIET MARTINEAU,
AUTHOR OF "SOCIETY IN AMERICA," "ILLUSTRATIONS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY," ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY SAUNDERS AND OTLEY
NEW-YORK:
SOLD BY HARPER & BROTHERS.
1838.
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME.
Page
Mississippi Voyage 5
Compromise 26
Cincinnati 35
Probation 57
The Natural Bridge 65
Colonel Burr 69
Villages 78
Cambridge Commencement 91
The White Mountains 108
Channing 117
Mutes and Blind 128
Nahant 155
Signs of the Times in Massachusetts 159
Hot and Cold Weather 169
Originals 186
Lake George 221
Cemeteries 227
RETROSPECT
OF
WESTERN TRAVEL.
MISSISSIPPI VOYAGE.
"That it was full of monsters who devoured canoes as well as men;
that the devil stopped its passage, and sunk all those who ventured
to approach the place where he stood; and that the river itself at
last was swallowed up in the bottomless gulf of a tremendous
whirlpool."--_Quarterly Review._
"Hic ver purpureum: varios hic flumina circum
Fundit humus flores: hic candida populus antro
Imminet, et lentæ texunt umbracula vites."
VIRGIL.
About four o'clock in the afternoon of the 6th of May we were convoyed,
by a large party of friends, to the "Henry Clay," on board of which
accommodations had been secured for us by great exertion on the part of
a fellow-voyager. The "Henry Clay" had the highest reputation of any
boat on the river, having made ninety-six trips without accident; a rare
feat on this dangerous river. As I was stepping on board, Judge P. said
he hoped we were each provided with a life-preserver. I concluded he was
in joke; but he declared himself perfectly serious, adding that we
should probably find ourselves the only cabin passengers unprovided with
this means of safety. We should have been informed of this before; it
was too late now. Mr. E., of our party on board, told me all that this
inquiry made me anxious to know. He had been accustomed to ascend and
descend the river annually with his family, and he made his arrangements
according to his knowledge of the danger of the navigation. It was his
custom to sit up till near the time of other people's rising, and to
sleep in the day. There are always companies of gamblers in these boats,
who, being awake and dressed during the hours of darkness, are able to
seize the boats on the first alarm of an accident in the night, and are
apt to leave the rest of the passengers behind. Mr. E. was a friend of
the captain; he was a man of gigantic bodily strength and cool temper,
every way fitted to be of use in an emergency; and the captain gave him
the charge of the boats in case of a night accident. Mr. E. told me
that, as we were particularly under his charge, his first thought in a
time of danger would be of us. He had a life-preserver, and was an
excellent swimmer, so that he had little doubt of being able to save us
in any case. He only asked us to come the instant we were called, to do
as we were bid, and to be quiet. As we looked at the stately vessel,
with her active captain, her two pilots, the crowds of gay passengers,
and all the provision for safety and comfort, it was scarcely possible
to realize the idea of danger; but we knew that the perils of this
extraordinary river, sudden and overwhelming, are not like those of the
ocean, which can be, in a great measure, guarded against by skill and
care. The utmost watchfulness cannot here provide against danger from
squalls, from changes in the channel of the river, and from the _snags_,
_planters_, and _sawyers_ (trunks of trees brought down from above by
the current, and fixed in the mud under water) which may at any moment
pierce the hull of the vessel.
Our New-Orleans friends remained with us upward of an hour, introducing
us to the captain, and to such of the passengers as they knew. Among
these were Mr. and Mrs. L., of Boston, Massachusetts. We little imagined
that afternoon how close an intimacy would grow out of this casual
meeting; how many weeks we should afterward spend in each other's
society, with still-increasing esteem and regard. The last thing one of
my friends said was that he was glad we were going, as there had been
forty cases of cholera in the city the day before.
After five o'clock the company on deck and in the cabins, who had bidden
farewell to their friends some time before, began to inquire of one
another why we were not setting off. We had found the sun too warm on
deck, and had had enough of mutual staring with the groups on the wharf;
we turned over the books, and made acquaintance with the prints in the
ladies' cabin, and then leisurely arranged our staterooms to our
liking; and still there was no symptom of departure. The captain was
obviously annoyed. It was the non-arrival of a party of passengers which
occasioned the delay. A multitude of Kentuckians and other western men
had almost forced their way on board as deck-passengers; men who had
come down the river in flatboats with produce, who were to work their
way up again by carrying wood at the wooding-places, morning and
evening, to supply the engine fire. These men, like others, prefer a
well-managed to a perilous boat, and their eagerness to secure a passage
was excessive. More thronged in after the captain had declared that he
was full; more were bustling on the wharf, and still the expected party
did not come. The captain ordered the plank to be taken up which formed
a communication with the shore. Not till six o'clock was it put down for
the dilatory passengers, who did not seem to be aware of the
inconvenience they had occasioned. They were English. A man on the wharf
took advantage of the plank being put down to come on board in spite of
prohibition. He went with his bundle to the spot on the second deck
which he chose for a sleeping-place, and immediately lay down, without
attracting particular notice from any one.
We braved the heat on the hurricane deck for the sake of obtaining last
views of New-Orleans. The city soon became an indistinguishable mass of
buildings lying in the swamp, yet with something of a cheerful air, from
the brightness of the sun. The lofty Cotton-press, so familiar to the
eye of every one acquainted with that region, was long visible amid the
windings of the river, which seemed to bring us quite near the city
again when we thought we should see it no more.
At seven we were summoned to supper, and obtained a view of the company
in whose society we were to pass the next ten days. There was a great
mixture. There was a physician from New-York, with his wife and a friend
or two; an ultra-exclusive party. There were Mr. and Mrs. B., also from
New-York, amiable elderly people, with some innocent peculiarities, and
showing themselves not the less mindful of other people from taking
great care of each other. There was the party that had kept the captain
waiting, some of them very agreeable; and the L.'s, whom it would have
been a privilege to meet anywhere. There were long trains of young men,
so many as to extinguish all curiosity as to who they were and where
they came from; and a family party belonging to the West, father,
mother, grandmother, and six children, who had a singular gift of
squalling; and their nurses, slaves. These are all that I distinctly
remember among the multitude that surrounded the almost interminable
table in the cabin. This table, long as it was, would not hold all the
company. Many had to wait till seats were vacated, and yet we were to go
on receiving passengers all the way to Natchez.
We took in more this evening. After supper we hastened again to the
hurricane deck, where the air was breathing cool, and, to our great joy,
strong enough to relieve us from moschetoes. The river was lined with
plantations of cotton and sugar, as it continued to be for two hundred
miles farther. Almost every turn of the mighty stream disclosed a
sugarhouse of red brick, with a centre and wings, all much alike. Groups
of slaves, most of them nearly naked, were chopping wood, or at other
kinds of toil along the shore. As the twilight melted into the golden
moonlight of this region, I saw sparkles among the reeds on the margin
of the stream. It did not occur to me what they were till I saw a horse
galloping in a meadow, and apparently emitting gleams of fire. I then
knew that I at length saw fireflies. One presently alighted on the linen
coat of a gentleman standing beside me, where it spread its gleam over a
space as large as the palm of my hand, making the finest of the threads
distinctly visible.
In a dark recess of the shore a large fire suddenly blazed up, and
disclosed a group of persons standing on the brink of the stream. Our
boat neared the shore, for this was a signal from a party who had
secured their passage with us. Night after night I was struck with the
same singular combination of lights which I now beheld; the moonlight,
broad and steady; the blazing brands, sometimes on the shore, and
sometimes on board the flatboats we met; and the glancing fireflies.
When we went down for the night we had our first experience of the
crying of the little H.'s. They were indefatigable children; when one
became quiet, another began; and, among them, they kept up the squall
nearly the twenty-four hours round. Their mother scolded them; their
nurses humoured them; and, between these two methods of management,
there was no peace for anybody within hearing. There was a good deal of
trampling overhead too. Many of the deck passengers had to sleep in the
open air, on the hurricane deck, from their being no room for them
below; and, till they had settled themselves, sleep was out of the
question for those whose staterooms were immediately beneath. At length,
however, all was quiet but the rumbling of the engine, and we slept.
When I went on deck in the morning, before six, I was privately told by
a companion that the man who had last forced his way on board had died
of cholera in the night, and had been laid under a tree at the
wooding-place a few minutes before. Never was there a lovelier morning
for a worn wretch to lie down to his long sleep. The captain
particularly desired that the event should be passed over in entire
silence, as he was anxious that there should be no alarm about the
disease on board the boat. The poor man had, as I have mentioned, lain
down in his place as soon as he came among us. He lay unobserved till
two in the morning, when he roused the neighbour on each side of him.
They saw his state at a glance, and lost not a moment in calling down
the New-York physician; but, before this gentleman could get to him, the
sick man died. His body was handed over to the people at the
wooding-place, and buried in the cheerful morning sunshine. We sped away
from that lonely grave as if we were in a hurry to forget it; and when
we met at breakfast, there was mirth and conversation, and conventional
observance, just as if death had not been among us in the night. This
was no more than a quickening of the process by which man drops out of
life, and all seems to go on as if he had never been: only seems,
however. Even in this case, where the departed had been a stranger to us
all, and had sunk from amid us in eight hours, I believe there were few
or no hearts untouched, either by sorrow for him or fear for themselves.
We were none of us as we should have been if this his brief connexion
with us had never existed.
All the morning we were passing plantations, and there were houses along
both banks at short intervals; sometimes the mansions of planters,
sometimes sugarhouses, sometimes groups of slave-dwellings, painted or
unpainted, standing under the shade of sycamores, magnolias, live oaks,
or Pride-of-India trees. Many dusky gazing figures of men with the axe,
and women with the pitcher, would have tempted the pencil of an artist.
The fields were level and rich-looking, and they were invariably bounded
by the glorious forest. Towards noon we perceived by the number of
sailing-boats that we were near some settlement, and soon came upon
Donaldsonville, a considerable village, with a large unfinished
Statehouse, where the legislature of Louisiana once sat, which was
afterward removed to New-Orleans, whence it has never come back. Its
bayou boasts a steamer, by which planters in the south back-country are
conveyed to their estates on leaving the Mississippi.
We now felt ourselves sufficiently at home to decide upon the
arrangement of our day. The weather was too hot to let the fatigues of
general conversation be endurable for many hours together; and there was
little in the general society of the vessel to make us regret this. We
rose at five or a little later, the early morning being delicious.
Breakfast was ready at seven, and after it I apparently went to my
stateroom for the morning; but this was not exactly the case. I observed
that the laundresses hung their counterpanes and sheets to dry in the
gallery before my window, and that, therefore, nobody came to that
gallery. It struck me that this must be the coolest part of the boat,
such an evaporation as was perpetually going on. I therefore stepped out
of my window, with my book, work, or writing; and, sitting under the
shade of a counterpane, and in full view of the river and western shore,
spent in quiet some of the pleasantest mornings I have ever known. I was
now and then reminded of the poor parson, pitied by Mrs. Barbauld:--
"Or crossing lines
Shall mar thy musings, as the wet cold sheet
Flaps in thy face abrupt;"
and sometimes an unsympathizing laundress would hang up an impenetrable
veil between me and some object on shore that I was eagerly watching;
but these little inconveniences were nothing in the way of
counterbalance to the privilege of retirement. I took no notice of the
summons to luncheon at eleven, and found that dinner, at half past one,
came far too soon. We all thought it our duty to be sociable in the
afternoon, and, therefore, took our seats in the gallery on the other
side of the boat, where we were daily introduced to members of our
society who before were strangers, and spent two or three hours in
conversation or at chess. It was generally very hot, and the
conversation far from lively, consisting chiefly of complaints of the
heat or the glare; of the children or of the dulness of the river;
varied by mutual interrogation about where everybody was going. A remark
here and there was amusing; as when a lady described Canada as the place
where people row boats, and sing, "Row, brothers, row," and all that.
When the heat began to decline, we went to the hurricane deck to watch
the beauty of evening stealing on; and, as no one but ourselves and our
most esteemed acquaintance seemed to care for the wider view we here
obtained, we had the place to ourselves, except that some giddy boys
pursued their romps here, and kept us in a perpetual panic, lest, in
their racing, they should run overboard. There is no guard whatever, and
the leads overhang the water. Mr. E. said he never allowed his boys to
play here, but gave them the choice of playing below or sitting still on
the top.
After tea we came up again on fine evenings; walked for an hour or two,
and watched the glories of the night, till the deck passengers appeared
with their blankets and compelled us to go down.
Nothing surprised me more than to see that very few of the ladies looked
out of the boat unless their attention was particularly called. All the
morning the greater number sat in their own cabin, working collars,
netting purses, or doing nothing; all the evening they amused themselves
in the other cabin dancing or talking. And such scenery as we were
passing! I was in perpetual amazement that, with all that has been said
of the grandeur of this mighty river, so little testimony has been borne
to its beauty.
On the evening of our first day on the Mississippi, Mr. E. told me of
the imminent danger he and his lady had twice been in on board
steamboats. His stories give an idea of the perils people should make up
their minds to on such excursions as ours. On their wedding journey, the
E.'s, accompanied by their relative, Judge H., went down the Alabama
river. One night, when Mr. E. was just concluding the watch I have
described him as keeping, the boat ran foul of another, and parted in
two, beginning instantly to sink. Mr. E. roused his lady from her sleep,
made her thrust her feet into his boots, threw his cloak over her, and
carried her up to the deck, not doubting that, from her being the only
lady on board, she would be the first to be accommodated in the boat.
But the boat had been seized by some gamblers who were wide awake and
ready dressed when the accident happened, and they had got clear of the
steamer. Mr. E. shouted to them to take in the lady, only the lady; he
promised that neither Judge H. nor himself should enter the boat. They
might have come back for every one on board with perfect safety; but he
could not move them. Judge H., meanwhile, had secured a plank, on which
he hoped to seat Mrs. E., while Mr. E. and himself, both good swimmers,
might push it before them to the shore if they could escape the eddy
from the sinking vessel. Mr. E. heard next the voice of an old gentleman
whom he knew, who was in the boat, and trying to persuade the fellows to
turn back. Mr. E. shouted to him to shoot the wretches if they would not
come. The old gentleman took the hint, and held a pistol (which,
however, was not loaded) at the head of the man who was steering; upon
which they turned back and took in, not only Mrs. E., her party, and
their luggage, but everybody else, so that no lives were lost. Mrs. E.
lost nothing but the clothes she had left by her bedside. She was
perfectly quiet and obedient to directions the whole time. The vessel
sank within a quarter of an hour.
A few years after the E.'s went up the Mississippi with their little
girl. Some fine ladies on board wondered at Mrs. E. for shaking hands
with a rude farmer with whom she had some acquaintance, and it appears
probable that the farmer was aware of what passed. When Mr. E. was going
down to bed, near day, he heard a deck passenger say to another, in a
tone of alarm, "I say, John, look here!" "What's the matter?" asked Mr.
E. "Nothing, sir, only the boat's sinking." Mr. E. ran to the spot, and
found the news too true. The vessel had been pierced by a snag, and the
water was rushing in by hogsheads. The boat seemed likely to be at the
bottom in ten minutes. Mr. E. handed the men a pole, and bade them
thrust their bedding into the breach, which they did with much
cleverness, till the carpenter was ready with a better plug. The horrid
words, "the boat's sinking," had, however, been overheard, and the
screams of the ladies were dreadful. The uproar above and below was
excessive; but through it all was heard the voice of the rough farmer,
saying, "Where's E.'s girl? I shall save her first." The boat was run
safely ashore, and the fright was the greatest damage sustained.
We passed Baton Rouge, on the east Louisiana bank, on the afternoon of
this day. It stands on the first eminence we had seen on these shores,
and the barracks have a handsome appearance from the water. A
summer-house, perched on a rising ground, was full of people, amusing
themselves with smoking and looking abroad upon the river; and, truly,
they had an enviable station. A few miles farther on we went ashore at
the wooding-place, and I had my first walk in the untrodden forest. The
height of the trees seemed incredible as we stood at their foot and
looked up. It made us feel suddenly dwarfed. We stood in a crowd of
locust and cottonwood trees, elm, maple, and live oak; and they were all
bound together by an inextricable tangle of creepers, which seemed to
forbid our penetrating many paces into the forest beyond where the
woodcutters had intruded. I had a great horror of going too far, and was
not sorry to find it impossible; it would be so easy for the boat to
leave two or three passengers behind without finding it out, and no fate
could be conceived more desolate. I looked into the woodcutters'
dwelling, and hardly knew what to think of the hardihood of any one who
could embrace such a mode of life for a single week on any
consideration. Amid the desolation and abominable dirt, I observed a
moscheto bar--a muslin curtain--suspended over the crib. Without this,
the dweller in the wood would be stung almost to madness or death before
morning. This curtain was nearly of a saffron colour; the floor of the
hut was of damp earth, and the place so small that the wonder was how
two men could live in it. There was a rude enclosure round it to keep
off intruders, but the space was grown over with the rankest grass and
yellow weeds. The ground was swampy all about, up to the wall of
untouched forest which rendered this spot inaccessible except from the
river. The beautiful squills-flower grew plentifully, the only relief to
the eye from the vastness and rankness. Piles of wood were built up on
the brink of the river, and were now rapidly disappearing under the
activity of our deck-passengers, who were passing in two lines to and
from the vessel. The bell from the boat tinkled through the wilderness
like a foreign sound. We hastened on board, and I watched the
woodcutters with deep pity as they gazed after us for a minute or two,
and then turned into their forlorn abode.
We were in hopes of passing the junction of the Red River with the
Mississippi before dark, but found that we were not to see the Red River
at all; a channel having been partly found and partly made between an
island and the eastern shore, which saves a circuit of many miles. In
this narrow channel the current ran strong against us; and as we
laboured through it in the evening light, we had opportunity to observe
every green meadow, every solitary dwelling which presented itself in
the intervals of the forest. We grew more and more silent as the shades
fell, till we emerged from the dark channel into the great expanse of
the main river, glittering in the moonlight. It was like putting out to
sea.
Just before bedtime we stopped at Sarah Bayou to take in still more
passengers. The steward complained that he was coming to an end of his
mattresses, and that there was very little more room for gentlemen to
lie down, as they were already ranged along the tables, as well as all
over the floor. So much for the reputation of the "Henry Clay."
The next morning, the 8th, I was up in time to see the scramble for milk
that was going on at the wooding-place. The moment we drew to the land
and the plank was put out, the steward leaped on shore, and ran to the
woodcutters' dwelling, pitcher in hand. The servants of the gentry on
board followed, hoping to get milk for breakfast; but none succeeded
except the servant of an exclusive. This family had better have been
without milk to their coffee than have been tempted by it to such bad
manners as they displayed at the breakfast-table. Two young ladies who
had come on board the night before, who suspected nothing of private
luxuries at a public table, and were not aware of the scarcity of milk,
asked a waiter to hand them a pitcher which happened to belong to the
exclusives. The exclusives' servant was instantly sent round to take it
from them, and not a word of explanation was offered.
The woodcutters' dwelling before us was very different from the one we
had seen the night before. It was a good-sized dwelling, with a
cottonwood tree before it, casting a flickering shadow upon the porch,
and behind it was a well-cleared field. The children were decently
dressed, and several slaves peeped out from the places where they were
pursuing their avocations. A passenger brought me a beautiful bunch of
dwarf-roses which he had gathered over the garden paling. The piles of
wood prepared for the steamboats were enormous, betokening that there
were many stout arms in the household.
This morning we seemed to be lost among islands in a waste of waters.
The vastness of the river now began to bear upon our imaginations. The
flatboats we met looked as if they were at the mercy of the floods,
their long oars bending like straws in the current. They are so
picturesque, however, and there is something so fanciful in the canopy
of green boughs under which the floating voyagers repose during the heat
of the day, that some of us proposed building a flatboat on the Ohio,
and floating down to New-Orleans at our leisure.
Adams Fort, in the state of Mississippi, afforded the most beautiful
view we had yet seen on the river. The swelling hills, dropped with
wood, closed in a reach of the waters, and gave them the appearance of a
lake. White houses nestled in the clumps; goats, black and white,
browsed on the points of the many hills; and a perfect harmony of
colouring dissolved the whole into something like a dream. This last
charm is as striking to us as any in the vast wilderness through which
the "Father of Waters" takes his way. Even the turbid floods, varying
their hues with the changes of light and shadow, are a fit element of
the picture, and no one wishes them other than they are.
In the afternoon we ran over a log; the vessel trembled to her centre;
the ladies raised their heads from their work; the gentlemen looked
overboard; and I saw our yawl snagged as she was careering at the stern.
The sharp end of the log pricked through her bottom as if she had been
made of brown paper. She was dragged after us, full of water, till we
stopped at the evening wooding-place, when I ran to the hurricane deck
to see her pulled up on shore and mended. There I found the wind so high
that it appeared to me equally impossible to keep my seat and to get
down; my feather-fan blew away, and I expected to follow it myself--so
strangling was the gust--one of the puffs which take the voyager by
surprise amid the windings of this forest-banked river. The yawl was
patched up in a surprisingly short time. The deck passengers clustered
round to lend a hand, and the blows of the mallet resounded fitfully
along the shore as the gust came and passed over.
Every one wished to reach and leave Natchez before dark, and this was
accomplished. As soon as we came in sight of the bluff on which the
city is built, we received a hint from the steward to lock our
staterooms and leave nothing about, as there was no preventing the
townspeople from coming on board. We went on shore. No place can be more
beautifully situated; on a bend of the Mississippi, with a low platform
on which all the ugly traffic of the place can be transacted; bluffs on
each side; a steep road up to the town; and a noble prospect from
thence. The streets are sloping, and the drains are remarkably well
built; but the place is far from healthy, being subject to the yellow
fever. It is one of the oldest of the southern cities, though with a
new, that is, a perpetually-shifting population. It has handsome
buildings, especially the Agricultural Bank, the Courthouse, and two or
three private dwellings. Main-street commands a fine view from the
ascent, and is lined with Pride-of-India trees. I believe the
landing-place at Natchez has not improved its reputation since the
descriptions which have been given of it by former travellers. When we
returned to the boat after an hour's walk, we found the captain very
anxious to clear his vessel of the townspeople and get away. The cabin
was half full of the intruders, and the heated, wearied appearance of
our company at tea bore testimony to the fatigues of the afternoon.
In the evening only one firefly was visible; the moon was misty, and
faint lightning flashed incessantly. Before morning the weather was so
cold that we shut our windows, and the next day there was a fire in the
ladies' cabin. Such are the changes of temperature in this region.
The quantity of driftwood that we encountered above Natchez was amazing.
Some of it was whirling slowly down with the current, but much more was
entangled in the bays of the islands, and detained in incessant
accumulation. It can scarcely be any longer necessary to explain that it
is a mistake to suppose this driftwood to be the foundation of the
islands of the Mississippi. Having itself no foundation, it could not
serve any such purpose. The islands are formed by deposites of soil
brought down from above by the strong force of the waters. The
accumulation proceeds till it reaches the surface, when the seeds
contained in the soil, or borne to it by the winds, sprout, and bind the
soft earth by a network of roots, thus providing a basis for a stronger
vegetation every year. It is no wonder that superficial observers have
fallen into this error respecting the origin of the new lands of the
Mississippi, the rafts of driftwood look so like incipient islands; and
when one is fixed in a picturesque situation, the gazer longs to heap
earth upon it, and clothe it with shrubbery.
When we came in sight of Vicksburg the little H.'s made a clamour for
some new toys. Their mother told them how very silly they were; what a
waste of money it would be to buy such toys as they would get at
Vicksburg; that they would suck the paint, &c. Strange to say, none of
these considerations availed anything. Somebody had told the children
that toys were to be bought at Vicksburg, and all argument was to them
worth less than the fact. The contention went on till the boat stopped,
when the mother yielded, with the worst possible grace, and sent a slave
nurse on shore to buy toys. An hour after we were again on our way, the
lady showed me, in the presence of the children, the wrecks of the toys;
horses' legs, dogs' heads, the broken body of a wagon, &c., all, whether
green, scarlet, or yellow, sucked into an abominable daub. She
complained bitterly of the children for their folly, and particularly
for their waste of her money, as if the money were not her concern, and
the fun theirs!
We walked through three or four streets of Vicksburg, but the captain
could not allow us time to mount the hill. It is a raw-looking,
straggling place, on the side of a steep ascent, the steeple of the
Courthouse magnificently overlooking a huge expanse of wood and a deep
bend of the river. It was three months after this time that the
tremendous Vicksburg massacre took place; a deed at which the whole
country shuddered, and much of the world beyond. In these disorders
upward of twenty persons were executed, without trial by jury or
pretence of justice. Some of the sufferers were gamblers, and men of bad
character otherwise; some were wholly innocent of any offence whatever;
and I believe it is now generally admitted that the plot for rousing the
slaves to insurrection, which was the pretext for the whole proceeding,
never had any real existence. It was the product of that peculiar
faculty of imagination which is now monopolized by the slaveholder, as
of old by imperial tyrants. Among the sufferers in this disturbance was
a young farmer of Ohio, I think, who was proceeding to New-Orleans on
business, and was merely resting on the eastern bank of the river on his
way. I have seldom seen anything more touching than his brief letter to
his parents, informing them that he was to be executed the next morning.
Nothing could be quieter in its tone than this letter; and in it he
desired that his family would not grieve too much for his sudden death,
for he did not know that he could ever feel more ready for the event
than then. His old father wrote an affecting appeal to the Governor of
Mississippi, desiring, not vengeance, for that could be of no avail to a
bereaved parent, but investigation, for the sake of his son's memory and
the future security of innocent citizens. The governor did not recognise
the appeal. The excuse made for him was that he could not; that if the
citizens of the state preferred Lynch law to regular justice, the
governor could do nothing against the will of the majority. The effect
of barbarism like this is not to justify the imputation of its excesses
to the country at large, but to doom the region in which it prevails to
be peopled by barbarians. The lovers of justice and order will avoid the
places where they are set at naught.
Every day reminded us of the superiority of our vessel, for we passed
every boat going the same way, and saw some so delayed by accidents that
we wondered what was to become of the passengers; at least, of their
patience. A disabled boat was seen on the morning of this day, the 9th,
crowded with Kentuckians, some of whom tried to win their way on board
the "Henry Clay" by witticisms; but our captain was inexorable,
declaring that we could hold no more. Then we passed the Ohio steamboat,
which left New-Orleans three days before us, but was making her way very
slowly, with cholera on board.
The 10th was Sunday. The children roared as usual; but the black damsels
were dressed; there was no laundry-work going on, nor fancy-work in the
cabin; and there was something of a Sunday look about the place. As I
was sitting by my stateroom window, sometimes reading and sometimes
looking out upon the sunny river, green woods, and flatboats that keep
no Sabbath, a black servant entered to say that Mr. E. desired me "to
come to the preachin'." I thought it unlikely that Mr. E. should be
concerned in the affair, and knew too well what the service was likely
to be in such a company, and conducted by such a clergyman as was to
officiate, to wish to attend. I found afterward that the service had
been held against the wishes of the captain, Mr. E., and many others;
and that it had better, on all accounts, have been omitted. Some
conversation which the young clergyman had thrust upon me had exhibited
not only his extreme ignorance of the religious feelings and convictions
of Christians who differed from him, but no little bitterness of
contempt towards them; and he was, therefore, the last person to conduct
the worship of a large company whose opinions and sentiments were almost
as various as their faces. This reminds me that an old lady on board
asked an acquaintance of mine what my religion was. On being told that I
was a Unitarian, she exclaimed, "She had better have done with that; she
won't find it go down with us." It never occurred to me before to
determine my religion by what would please people on the Mississippi.
Before breakfast one morning, when I was walking on the hurricane deck,
I was joined by a young man who had been educated at West Point, and who
struck me as being a fair and creditable specimen of American youth. He
told me that he was very poor, and described his difficulties from being
disappointed of the promotion he had expected on leaving West Point. He
was now turning to the law; and he related by what expedients he meant
to obtain the advantage of two years' study of law before settling in
Maine. His land-travelling was done on foot, and there was no pretension
to more than his resources could command. His manners were not so good
as those of American youths generally, and he was not, at first, very
fluent, but expressed himself rather in schoolboy phrase. His
conversation was, however, of a host of metaphysicians as well as
lawyers; and I thought he would never have tired of analyzing Bentham,
from whom he passed on, like every one who talks in America about books
or authors, to Bulwer, dissecting his philosophy and politics very
acutely. He gave me clear and sensible accounts of the various operation
of more than one of the United States institutions, and furnished me
with some very acceptable information. After our walk and conversation
had lasted an hour and a half, we were summoned to breakfast, and I
thought we had earned it.
During the morning I heard a friend of mine, in an earnest but amused
tone, deprecating a compliment from two slave women who were trying to
look most persuasive. They were imploring her to cut out a gown for each
of them like the one she wore. They were so enormously fat and
slovenly, and the lady's dress fitted so neatly, as to make the idea of
the pattern being transferred to them most ludicrous. As long as we were
on board, however, I believe they never doubted my friend's power of
making them look like herself if she only would; and they continued to
cast longing glances on the gown.
On the 11th we overtook another disabled steamboat, which had been lying
forty-eight hours with both her cylinders burst; unable, of course, to
move a yard. We towed her about two miles to a settlement, and the
captain agreed to take on board two young ladies who were anxious to
proceed, and a few deck-passengers.
The scenery was by this time very wild. These hundreds of miles of level
woods, and turbid, rushing waters, and desert islands, are oppressive to
the imagination. Very few dwellings were visible. We went ashore in the
afternoon, just for the sake of having been in Arkansas. We could
penetrate only a little way through the young cottonwood and the tangled
forest, and we saw nothing.
In the evening we touched at Helena, and more passengers got on board,
in defiance of the captain's shouts of refusal. He declared that the
deck was giving way under the crowd, and that he would not go near the
shore again, but anchor in the middle of the river, and send his boats
for provisions.
While I was reading on the morning of the 12th, the report of a rifle
from the lower deck summoned me to look out. There were frequent
rifle-shots, and they always betokened our being near shore; generally
under the bank, where the eye of the sportsman was in the way of
temptation from some object in the forest. We were close under the
eastern bank, whence we could peep through the massy beech-trunks into
the dark recesses of the woods. For two days our eyes had rested on
scenery of this kind; now it was about to change. We were approaching
the fine Chickasaw bluffs, below Memphis, in the State of Tennessee. The
captain expressed a wish that none of the passengers would go on shore
at Memphis, where the cholera was raging. He intended to stay only a few
minutes for bread and vegetables, and would not admit a single passenger
on any consideration. We did not dream of disregarding his wishes, if,
indeed, the heat had left us any desire to exert ourselves; but Mr. B.
was so anxious that his lady should mount the bluff, that she yielded
to his request; though, stout and elderly as she was, the ascent would
have been a serious undertaking on a cool afternoon and with plenty of
time. The entire company of passengers was assembled to watch the
objects on shore; the cotton bales piled on the top of the bluff; the
gentleman on horseback on the ridge, who was eying us in return; the old
steamer, fitted up as a store, and moored by the bank, for the chance of
traffic with voyagers; and, above all, the slaves, ascending and
descending the steep path, with trays of provisions on their heads, the
new bread and fresh vegetables with which we were to be cheered. Of
course, all eyes were fixed upon Mr. and Mrs. B. as they attempted the
ascent. The husband lent his best assistance, and dragged his poor lady
about one third of the way up, when she suddenly found that she could
not go a step forward or back; she stuck, in a most finished attitude of
panic, with her face to the cliff and her back to us, her husband
holding her up by one arm, and utterly at a loss what to do next. I hope
they did not hear the shout of laughter which went up from our vessel. A
stout boatman ran to their assistance, and enabled the lady to turn
round, after which she came down without accident. She won everybody's
esteem by her perfect good-humour on the occasion. Heated and flurried
as she was, she was perfectly contented with having tried to oblige her
husband. This was her object, and she gained it; and more, more than she
was aware of, unless, indeed, she found that her fellow-passengers were
more eager to give her pleasure after this adventure than before.
The town of Memphis looked bare and hot; and the bluffs, though a relief
from the level vastness on which we had been gazing for two days, are
not so beautiful as the eminences four or five hundred miles below.
The air was damp and close this night; the moon dim, the lightning blue,
and glaring incessantly, and the woodashes from the chimneys very
annoying. It was not weather for the deck; and, seeing that Mr. E. and
two other gentlemen wanted to make up a rubber, I joined them. In our
well-lighted cabin the lightning seemed to pour in in streams, and the
thunder soon began to crack overhead. Mrs. H. came to us, and rebuked us
for playing cards while it thundered, which she thought very
blasphemous. When our rubber was over, and I retired to the ladies'
cabin, I found that the lady had been doing something which had at
least as much levity in it. After undressing, she had put on her
life-preserver, and floundered on the floor to show how she should swim
if the boat sank. Her slaves had got under the table to laugh. They
little thought how near we might come to swimming for our lives before
morning. I believe it was about three hours after midnight when I was
awakened by a tremendous and unaccountable noise overhead. It was most
like ploughing through a forest, and crashing all the trees down. The
lady who shared my stateroom was up, pale and frightened, and lights
were moving in the ladies' cabin. I did not choose to cause alarm by
inquiry; but the motion of the boat was so strange, that I thought it
must waken every one on board. The commotion lasted, I should think,
about twenty minutes, when I suppose it subsided, for I fell asleep. In
the morning I was shown the remains of hailstones, which must have been
of an enormous size, to judge by what was left of them at the end of
three hours. Mr. E. told me that we had been in the utmost danger for
above a quarter of an hour, from one of the irresistible squalls to
which this navigation is liable. Both the pilots had been blown away
from the helm, and were obliged to leave the vessel to its fate. It was
impossible to preserve a footing for an instant on the top; and the poor
passengers who lay there had attempted to come down, bruised with the
tremendous hail (which caused the noise we could not account for), and
seeing, with the pilot, no other probability than that the hurricane
deck would be blown completely away; but there was actually no standing
room for these men, and they had to remain above and take their chance.
The vessel drove madly from side to side of the dangerous channel, and
the pilots expected every moment that she would founder. I find that we
usually made much more way by night than by day, the balance of the boat
being kept even while the passengers are equally dispersed and quiet,
instead of running from side to side, or crowding the one gallery and
deserting the other.
I was on the lookout for alligators all the way up the river, but could
never see one. A deck passenger declared that a small specimen slipped
off a log into the water one day when nobody else was looking; but his
companions supposed he might be mistaken, as alligators are now rarely
seen in this region. Terrapins were very numerous, sometimes sunning
themselves on floating logs, and sometimes swimming, with only their
pert little heads visible above water. Wood-pigeons might be seen
flitting in the forest when we were so close under the banks as to pry
into the shades, and the beautiful blue jay often gleamed before our
eyes. No object was more striking than the canoes which we frequently
saw, looking fearfully light and frail amid the strong current. The
rower used a spoon-shaped paddle, and advanced with amazing swiftness;
sometimes crossing before our bows, sometimes darting along under the
bank, sometimes shooting across a track of moonlight. Very often there
was only one person in the canoe, as in the instance I have elsewhere
mentioned[1] of a woman who was supposed to be going on a visit twenty
or thirty miles up the stream. I could hardly have conceived of a
solitude so intense as this appeared to me, the being alone on that
rushing sea of waters, shut in by untrodden forests; the slow fishhawk
wheeling overhead, and perilous masses of driftwood whirling down the
current; trunks obviously uprooted by the forces of nature, and not laid
low by the hand of man. What a spectacle must our boat, with its gay
crowds, have appeared to such a solitary! what a revelation that there
was a busy world still stirring somewhere; a fact which, I think, I
should soon discredit if I lived in the depths of this wilderness, for
life would become tolerable there only by the spirit growing into
harmony with the scene, wild and solemn as the objects around it.
[Footnote 1: Society in America, vol. ii., p. 101.]
The morning after the storm the landscape looked its wildest. The clouds
were drifting away, and a sungleam came out as I was peeping into the
forest at the wooding-place. The vines look beautiful on the black
trunks of the trees after rain. Scarcely a habitation was to be seen,
and it was like being set back to the days of creation, we passed so
many islands in every stage of growth. I spent part of the morning with
the L.'s, and we were more than once alarmed by a fearful scream,
followed by a trampling and scuffling in the neighbouring gallery. It
was only some young ladies, with their work and guitar, who were in a
state of terror because some green boughs _would_ sweep over when we
were close under the bank. They could not be reassured by the gentlemen
who waited upon them, nor would they change their seats; so that we
were treated with a long series of screams, till the winding of the
channel carried us across to the opposite bank.
In the afternoon we came in sight of New Madrid, in the State of
Missouri; a scattered small place, on a green tableland. We sighed to
think how soon our wonderful voyage would be over, and at every
settlement we reached repined at being there so soon. While others went
on shore, I remained on board to see how they looked, dispersed in the
woods, grouped round the woodpiles, and seated on logs. The clergyman
urged my going, saying, "It's quite a retreat to go on shore." This
gentleman is vice-president of an educational establishment for young
ladies, where there are public exhibitions of their proficiency, and the
poor ignorant little girls take degrees. Their heads must be so stuffed
with vainglory that there can be little room for anything else.
There were threatenings of another night of storm. The vessel seemed to
labour much, and the weather was gusty, with incessant lightnings. The
pilots said that they were never in such danger on the river as for
twenty minutes of the preceding night. The captain was, however, very
thankful for a few hours of cold weather; for his boat was so
overcrowded as to make him dread, above all things, the appearance of
disease on board. Some of us went to bed early this night, expecting to
be called up to see the junction of the Ohio with the Mississippi by
such light as there might be two hours after midnight. Mr. E. promised
to have me called, and on the faith of this I went to sleep at the usual
time. I had impressed him with my earnest desire not to miss this sight,
as I had seen no junction of large rivers, except that of the Tombigbee
with the Alabama. Mrs. B. would not trust to being called, but sat up,
telling her husband that it was now his turn to gratify her, and he must
come for her in good time to see the spectacle. Both she and I were
disappointed, however. When I awoke it was five o'clock, and we were
some miles into the Ohio. Mr. E. had fallen asleep, and awaked just a
minute too late to make it of any use to rouse me. Mr. B. had put his
head into his wife's room to tell her that the cabin floor was so
completely covered with sleepers that she could not possibly make her
way to the deck, and he shut the door before she could open her lips to
reply. Her lamentations were sad. "The three great rivers meeting and
all; and the little place on the point called Trinity and all; and I
having sat up for it and all! It is a bad thing on some accounts to be
married. If I had been a single woman, I could have managed it all for
myself, I know."